If this is your first visit, be sure to
check out the FAQ by clicking the
link above. You may have to register
before you can post: click the register link above to proceed. To start viewing messages,
select the forum that you want to visit from the selection below.

New member in al/ga

Hey everybody. I live in Alabama and just bought some land in Georgia.
I bought a couple of hives and did a removal of a small wild colony last month. I was a serious beekeeper in the 80's and kept a few hives in the 90's.
I want to get up to maybe 40 or 50 colonies over the next couple of years if battling mites and beetles doesn't turn out to be too much of a problem.

Re: New member in al/ga

Originally Posted by sfisher

Welcome, I didnt have bees in the 70s and 80s, but I have heard its not the same anymore.

it was. we knew the varroa was coming but it wasn't a problem yet.
i started back in the late 90's and maybe had bees until 2004 and at that point i was losing hives to shb even though i was told they weren't here yet.
i wasn't treating for varroa and i wasn't buying queens. i was going through in late summer and killing the queens in all the hives except for one colony of black bees i had removed from a house (i was letting that hive raise drones).
i was actually keeping a pretty good percentage of my hives through the winter but the bees became more likely to swarm and less productive. i think the hive beetles became the bigger issue in the end.
anyway, i'm trying to decide what direction to try to go in this time.

Re: New member in al/ga

Alot of people are having having half way decent success with the tray under a screen bottom board for shb control. I have them but not real bad. Sometimes when I inspect I will find a spot, usually on the bottom of a frame were the bees will have the shb all penned up. I am just using traps, if you put the trap in the right spot you can really to some damage to them.

Re: New member in al/ga

Welcome Robndixie, This is a great site and I have learned many things from just reading around. This is my first year and we just started using DE for the SHB in the last month and have done alot of damage to them in just this short time.